Day 69 - Gili Meno

We awake at a more reasonable hour today and decide as it's lovely and warm we'll take a trip around the island. Meno is the smallest of the 3 islands and it should take about an hour to walk around the entire outside of it. Neither of us have ever walked around an entire island before so its sommat new to do.

Temperature is about 31 today not much breeze no cloud just lots of sun.
As we leave the "strip" of the island it's not long before we're the only people for about a good 10 minute walk. The North of the island has a couple of bungalows but doesn't look like anybody is in them, we eventualy reach a place where we can grab a refreshing drink and chill for half an hour before soldering on. The West of the island is now even more deserted, it looks like it used to be the main part of the island (closest to its big brother Gili Trawangan) as theres parts of the old pier still sticking out of the water and a couple of huge hotels/restaurants complete with pools and tourist shops which are now derelict and completely abandoned. Its a shame really as some of the buildings are really nice however i'm guessing they closed as they get very little business being on the opposite side of the island to the harbour, even though it's not a big island most of the hotels and bungalows here are located just as you get off the boat so a load of people offer you rooms within about a couple minutes walk so most people never get to see the other side.

As we carry on round we have a quick dip in the sea and make it to the South of the island which is full of cactus and huge palm trees. The coral sand beach turns to huge pebbles and rocks and we're greeted on the pavement by a huge cow (i don't know who was surprised more us at seeing life on this part of the island or the cow as we interupted his lunch!)

About 10 minutes later we start to see signs of life again people sun bathing and snorkeling and finally we hit a Warung (Beach side bar) and grab a well earned fruit salad and a cold drink.

After a bit of chilling we headed back to the room and were greeted by lots of lizards on our balcony/porch which entertained Rhona no end (There was no point in speaking to her as she was fully concentrating on the Geckos!) We headed out for tea at the slowest place on earth, took about 50 minutes for our food to reach us however it took some people even longer, the "restaurant" was actually a little kitchen in the back of a corner shop so we couldn't be too harsh on them also the food was nice when it eventually arrived.

The people on this island don't really have 1 job they all do each others so the guy that brought us our food actually runs a diving shop next door but he helps out when he gets bored.

We also had free entertainment in the form of a local guy with his guitar, he sang Hotel california (3 times) but it was funny as he didn't know all the English words so there were a lot of Doooo Deeeee Daaaas in there.

After we headed back to the room to watch a bit of Lie to Me and to catch up on some sleep, only a few creepy crawlies in the room tonight so much better than last night however the little Geckos that Rhona loves make a bizzare noise which is annoying when you're trying to sleep but she finds it amusing....